The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice [197]
“Oh, stop, please, I beg you,” I whispered. I put up my hands. “Let me try, and let him hurt me, and then be satisfied, and turn away.”
I only meant it as I said it, and I felt no power in it, only meekness and unutterable sadness.
But it struck her hard, and for the first time her face became absolutely and totally sorrowful, and she too had moist and reddening eyes, and her lips even pressed together as she looked at me.
“Poor lost child, Armand,” she said. “I am so sorry for you. I was so glad that you had survived the sun.”
“Then that means I can forgive you, Gabrielle,” I said, “for all the cruel things you’ve said to me.”
She raised her eyebrows thoughtfully, and then slowly nodded in silent assent. Then putting up her hands, she backed away without a sound and took up her old station, sitting on the altar step, her head leaning back against the Communion rail. She brought up her knees as before, and she merely looked at me, her face in shadow.
I waited. She was still and quiet, and not a sound came from the occupants scattered about the chapel. I could hear the steady beat of Sybelle’s heart and the anxious breath of Benji, but they were many yards away.
I looked down on Lestat, who was unchanged, his hair fallen as before, a little over his left eye. His right arm was out, and his fingers curling upwards, and there came from him not the slightest movement, not even a breath from his lungs or a sigh from his pores.
I knelt down beside him again. I reached out, and without flinching or hesitating, I brushed his hair back from his face.
I could feel the shock in the room. I heard the sighs, the gasps from the others. But Lestat himself didn’t stir.
Slowly, I brushed his hair more tenderly, and I saw to my own mute shock one of my tears fall right onto his face.
It was red yet watery and transparent and it appeared to vanish as it moved down the curve of his cheekbone and into the natural hollow below.
I slipped down closer, turning on my side, facing him, my hand still on his hair. I stretched my legs out behind me, and alongside of him, and I lay there, letting my face rest right on his outstretched arm.
Again there came the shocked gasps and sighs, and I tried to keep my heart absolutely pure of pride and pure of anything but love.
It was not differentiated or defined, this love, but only love, the love I could feel perhaps for one I killed or one I succored, or one whom I passed in the street, or for one whom I knew and valued as much as him.
All the burden of his sorrows seemed unimaginable to me, and in my mind a notion of it expanded to include the tragedy of all of us, those who kill to live, and thrive on death even as the very Earth decrees it, and are cursed with consciousness to know it, and know by what inches all things that feed us slowly anguish and at last are no more. Sorrow. Sorrow so much greater than guilt, and so much more ready for accounting, sorrow too great for the wide world.
I climbed up. I rested my weight on my elbow, and I sent my right fingers slipping gently across his neck. Slowly I pressed my lips to his whitened silky skin and breathed in the old unmistakable taste and scent of him, something sweet and undefinable and utterly personal, something made up of all his physical gifts and those given him afterwards, and I pressed my sharp eyeteeth through his skin to taste his blood.
There was no chapel then for me, or outraged sighs or reverential cries. I heard nothing, and yet knew what was all around. I knew it as if the substantial place was but a phantasm, for what was real was his blood.
It was as thick as honey, deep and strong of taste, a syrup for the very angels.
I groaned aloud drinking it, feeling the searing heat of it, so unlike to any human blood. With each slow beat of his powerful heart there came another small surge of it, until my mouth was filled and my throat swallowed without my bidding, and the sound of his heart grew louder, ever louder, and a reddish shimmer filled my vision, and I saw through this